At this stage the children need lots of opportunities to move Roamer along a route on the Roamer mat--whether or not this involves a turn. Inexpensive Roamer mats can be made from off cuts of vinyl floor covering and marked out in 30cm X 30cm squares to make a grid. Use large pictures downloaded from the Internet to create a more interesting route which can be related to work in other areas of the curriculum.

Make sure that the children understand why it is important to record the sequence of instructions they give to make Roamer move. In the beginning Roamer should stop after each move and instructions written accordingly.

At the end of the session challenge the children to change their instructions so that Roamer will complete the route without stopping after each move. When they become more confident they will be able to attempt writing their own instructions which includes travelling from A to B without stopping.

The children should work in groups with a helper who encourages them to think for themselves through the use of prompting questions. At this stage (Y1 & new users) the adult should help the children to record their sequence of instructions as suggested in the session plans.

Year 1 (Reception)

Download

FileFormat

14

14A

Year 1 – Roamer booklet (photocopy back to back and fold into an A5 booklet -cloze)

The following resources contain detailed activity plans to help children in reception and KS1 develop an understanding of control technology using Roamer. The printed activity sheets can be given to parent helpers in class so that they can work with groups of children.

They show progression from an introduction to Roamer's command keys

Moving Roamer forwards and backwards along a route and giving Roamer directions

Making Roamer turn

Introducing quarter and half turns using Roamer, an introduction to right angles and degrees

Roamer turns in degrees. This is very useful for older children but working in degrees other than the 90° which equates to a quarter turn is too difficult for younger ones. Y2 children can have a lot of fun exploring the very beginnings of this concept ( see 31 below) and can cope with asking Roamer to turn 90° rather than a quarter turn.

The following materials can be used for those children who are ready to relate quarter & half turns to degrees and can be developed further for those who are ready to make the transition from one unit to the other when calculating the angle of turn. (KS2)

• To understand angle as a measure of turn using whole turns, quarter turns and half turns.

• To investigate and understand half and quarter turns when Roamer is programmed to turn in right angles.

• To investigate how many times Roamer will have to turn in order to turn full circle when Roamer turns in degrees (360) and how many (degrees) turns are the same as one quarter turn.

• To relate Roamer’s 360 turns to the 360° shown on a protractor and to link this with quarter and half turns.

31

KS1/Y2 Plan Session 1 — Quarter Turns v 90° turn

The children are introduced to the idea that one quarter turn is the same as one 90° turn

but are not expected to understand the concept of degrees at this stage.

Children need to develop the ability to think in different planes. Once Roamer has been turned to face in a different direction the children cannot always recognise future movements as forwards but see them as a movement ‘up’ or to the side.

To help them to understand movement and changes of direction children should always stand behind Roamer when they are programming it to move. The following activities may also help them to overcome this difficulty

Sheets 1, 2, 3 — Instructions for using paper Roamer Maps with the children, Roamer Route showing a right and a left turn with a blank background for children to fill in & a smaller version to write instructions/keys on.

Sheet 6 — starting to use shorthand to record instructions (Roamer Route Map) children could work in pairs with one copy of 1st sheet to pool ideas and their own copies of the 2nd sheet to record the route using shorthand.

Once Roamer has been turned to face in a different direction the children cannot always recognise future movements as forwards but see them as a movement ‘up’ or to the side.

To help them to understand movement and changes of direction children should always stand behind Roamer when they are programming it to move. The following activities may also help them to overcome this difficulty.

These free resources apply to Roamer (Control Technology) but can easily be adapted for use with other floor turtles such as BeeBots.

In this unit children learn how to create, test, modify and store instructions to control the movements of a floor turtle. They learn to programme the floor turtle to move around an area by using single instructions, a sequence of instructions and repeated sequences.